Green Broke Woman (7 page)

Travis figured as the oldest it was his duty
to settle down first and maybe his two younger brothers would follow suit and
stop living on false hope that someday Kayla would come back to them. He needed
to move on with his life. They all did, but the thought of waking up next to
another woman as his wife made his chest hurt even more than having to wake up
alone each morning.

Was he doing the right thing? Veronica wanted
kids ... someday. Kayla had been on the fence—another incompatibility, but that
was years ago. Maybe she’d since changed her mind.

Veronica was vanilla. Kayla was ... well, he
doubted she was still a virgin, but what were her tastes?

Ah, who was he kidding? He'd get a vasectomy
and turn vanilla if Kayla was the one he got to share his life with. He would
miss BDSM and the dream of having children, but he'd realized too late that he
missed her more since she'd left.

He heard his little sister, Miranda Langley,
coming down the stairs.

“You'll regret it,” she drawled in a
sing-song kind of tone.

“Veronica's a good woman,” Travis said,
debating whether or not to propose tonight or keep putting it off.

Veronica deserved a whole heart, not to be
second best. Of course, he figured he deserved a shot at healing, but deep down
he knew he was requiring a task of her that she'd never be able to accomplish.
No woman could erase what Kayla had meant to him, what she still meant to him
and probably always would.

Miranda pulled out a chair and kicked her
heels up on the wooden table, looking confident that their mother wasn't around
anymore to remind her to be a lady. “She
is
a good woman, but she's not the right woman for you. Don't settle, brother.”

“I'm not settling. This is a good thing.”

“Sounds like it,” she quipped.

“It is.”

“When are you going to tell Jake and Keith
that you're a quitter?”

Travis shot her an annoyed glance. “I'm no
quitter. I'm just trying to wise up to the fact that some things are never
gonna
happen.”

He silently cussed out the stupid twenty-six
year old version of himself in the past that had let his one sweetheart go
instead of trying to find a way to gradually introduce her to his lifestyle.
There was no rush. They could have spent the first year or two taking it slow
if she needed to. He could have started out slowly with spanking and sex toys
and worked from there.

Then eventually he could have brought up the
notion of his brothers joining in. Surely Kayla wouldn't have minded a ménage.
After all, she'd pretty much flirted with all of them during her teen years.

“You didn't answer my question,” Miranda
prodded.

Travis put the tiny box back into his pocket
and grabbed his keys and wallet. “I'll tell them when they come over for a
visit. You didn't tell them, did you?”

Miranda got a guilty face, but her humor
disclosed her lack of shame. “Well...”

“Miranda, I told you not to—” He answered the
ringing phone. “Hello?”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Keith
Langley demanded from the other end. “Miranda tells me you plan on proposing to
your girlfriend tonight.”

Travis shrugged, surprised by how weighed
down he felt emotionally.
“Yeah, so?”

Jake Langley's voice yelled in the background
“Fuck you, traitor!”

Travis rolled his eyes. “That's real nice,
Jake. Unlike you two players, I'm just trying to grow up and act like a man
now.”

Keith sounded frantic with exasperation. “No,
you're fucking up like an idiot is what you're doing. We agreed to wait for
Kayla to get back. Do you remember that?”

“Yeah, I remember, but I've got news for you,
little brother. She's never coming back.” The words caught in his throat,
making it suddenly sore.

“You don't know that,” Keith insisted.

“Keith, it's been six years and not a word.
She was just a teenager with a crush. We got ourselves in too deep taking her
seriously,” Travis countered.

Jake raised his voice from the background.
“She loved us, you dumbass! I saw the way she looked at me when she stumbled
across me and saw that woman sucking my cock. It wasn't just jealousy. She was
devastated. I've never seen that look on a woman's face, and I never want to
see that look on her face again.”

Travis rolled his eyes, noticing the time.
“You can't go five minutes without talking about your dick, can you, Jake?”

“Yeah well, I've got a dick worth talking
about, and it beats being one,” Jake retorted.

“Look, find someone else to yak with about
your bits and pieces. I've got a date,” Travis reminded him.

“You're making a mistake,” Keith told him.
“What if you marry this woman and Kayla does come back?”

That would be hell, but never settling down
and having a family was a lonely existence in his mind. “And what if she never
comes back? She left us to chase her dreams. Is it so unreasonable that I let
her go to chase after mine?”

“Except she is your dream,” Miranda spoke
into the phone from the other room.

“Miranda, get off the damned phone.”
Travis rolled his eyes at her saucy chortle.

“If you make this mistake and Kayla does come
back, we won't let her go. We'll have her just to the two of us, and we won't
back off out of sympathy for your stupidity,” Jake said loudly on the other
side.

“Jesus, Jake! Right by my head,” Keith
complained.

Miranda spoke up. “Just ask yourself this,
Travis. Which is worse, to go through life alone, or to share your life with
someone you know you weren't meant to be with?”

Travis sighed. “I appreciate the concern, but
my mind is made up. Now, you two go spank one of your little subs and let me
be.”

He hung up and headed out, thinking about
what they said. The song he'd heard earlier still played through his head.
Where was Kayla, and who was she with? Hell, she could be married with kids for
all he knew. Did he ever cross her mind?

When he pulled into Veronica's driveway and
saw her waiting for him and felt the painful chasm in his chest, he made his
decision, and he wasn't going back on it.

****

Kayla hung up the phone, fighting back tears.
She'd heard Travis Langley's voice. God, he had a sexy voice. The sound of his
familiar vocals seemed to transmit home to her through the long distance that
separated them.

She'd wrestled with the idea of calling her
father and asking to come home, but when the moment came to dial the numbers,
her old man's pride flared in her blood, and she called Travis instead. She
often dialed his number just to hear his voice.

She never heard Jake or Keith answer the
phone anymore. Had they moved out?

Occasionally she heard Miranda's spunky drawl
on the other end. Kayla smiled at the memories she'd made with her best girl
pal growing up. Miranda had been more of a tomboy as a kid while Kayla had been
a girlie girl, but as a teenager Miranda had bloomed into a feminine young
woman, albeit still a kick-ass blonde chick that had no problem letting the
boys
know
they'd met their match.

Kayla hurried out of the store as the
floodgates opened when the chorus of “Need You Now” serenaded her out. That
song always made her think of the Langley brothers, Travis in particular.

She never spoke on the phone with them when
she called. She just listened to them say hello a few times before hanging up.
It had been years since she'd seen them. They'd probably think she was a
pathetic mess with old feelings for them still simmering in her soul. She'd
never be able to hide it from them. They were good at reading people ... like
her Master had been.

She walked through the rain on her way home,
trying not to cry. As much as she liked California, the acting thing wasn’t
exactly working out. At times she was torn between going home to Kentucky to
see if the
Langleys
were still available and staying
here in hopes that Master Hugh would come back to her.

The savory aromas floating from the
restaurants made her hollow stomach growl painfully. She took a shortcut down
an alley and contemplated picking up some food for dinner on her way home.

Footsteps sounded from behind her, and she
saw a hefty shadow closing in on her. She walked faster, but the person matched
her step for step.

“Hey! Hey, you! Are you a hooker?” the man
called out.

“Uh, no,” she squeaked, quickening her steps.

“Would you like to be?” he asked, still
following her.

“No, thank you.”

“It pays
good
. I
take care of my bitches.”

“I'm fine, thanks.” Kayla walked faster,
cringing when she saw him stride more swiftly when she glanced over her
shoulder.

Her heart skipped a beat when she saw a
pickup screech to a halt at the end of the alley. Oh God, he had a partner in
crime.

The man walked next to her, breathing down
her neck, but he didn't touch her. “You don't
got
no
man at home, do you? I bet nobody would go looking for you if you went
missing.”

Oh crap!

The man in the truck honked and hollered out
the window. “What do you think you're doing harassing my wife?”

Kayla felt a crippling wave of relief wash
over her that nearly made her fall over. She didn't know who the cowboy in the
truck was, but if he wanted to help get her away from this creep, then she'd
gladly get into his truck with him.

She turned to face the pimp, faking boldness
as best as she could. “I'm married to a cop, and there are a lot of people who
would miss me.”

The creep backed off, throwing up his hands.
“Just having a harmless conversation.”

He backed away slowly and watched her get
into the truck with the other man before he took off running down the alley.

She couldn't stop shaking as she sat drenched
on the passenger's side while the man in a white Stetson drove away. “Thank you
for that.”

“No problem,” he said with a certain drawl
that made her wonder if he was from Tennessee. “What's a nice girl like you
doing wandering around in a dark alley at night?”

“I was on my way home. I really appreciate
what you did back there. I wish there was a better way for me to thank you.”

He
gave her a friendly smile while he drove. “Well, I could use a favor.”

“What kind of favor?”

“It's about my sister, Gretchen, but I'll
tell you after we eat.
You hungry?”

“Starving.”

“Good. I’ll buy you dinner.”
 
He extended his right hand. “My name is
Virgil. Virgil Paisley.”

“Kayla.”

She shook his hand, feeling a sense of
security come over her. Call it gut instinct or feminine intuition, but somehow
she knew she could trust the cowboy.

Chapter
Three: Bonding

Six months later

Beverly Hills, California

Kayla sat at the table with Virgil outside
the café. She twirled her straw in her icy pink lemonade, trying not to smile
too big as he spoke. They’d been meeting several times a week for the past six
months, mostly to discuss whether or not she’d found any information on his missing
sister, Gretchen, but Kayla never had.

She felt bad for the poor guy, but she had to
admit she enjoyed their time together immensely. In a posh world of fakeness
and glamour, he was the only one who seemed real to her. His country charm
reminded her of home.

Virgil sighed and palmed his tall, frosty
glass. “Beck Hammond might not have had anything to do with her going missing.
Just because Gretchen worked for him, doesn’t mean…” His voice trailed off. “I
don’t know what it is. I just don’t trust him.”

“I’ll keep looking.” Kayla reached across the
table and took his hand in hers, giving it a light squeeze. “We’ll find her.”

He flashed
her an
appreciative smile and turned in his seat to face her.
“Enough
about that.
How have you been?”

“Okay.”

The playful smile on his face made her
insides rise with giddiness.
“Just okay?”

She couldn’t fight the smile this time.
“Really good … now that you’re here.”

He kissed the top of her hand, making her
skin tingle. “I noticed you got a new tattoo.”

“I did.”

“Those look kind of like the flowers I got
you for your birthday.”

She blushed and took a drink from her
lemonade. “They are.”

“Are those your favorite flower?”

“One of them.
Mainly I got it because it meant a lot to
me, that you remembered my birthday and got me flowers.”